Signature running event in Detroit for nearly half a century is at risk of folding for lack of a major sponsor.

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Jeanne Bocci, 74, a retired teacher and former nationally ranked race walker poses for a portrait in front of race shirts from different years from the New Year Eve fun run she started with friends in her Grosse Pointe Park neighborhood in 1970.(Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo

Detroit’s New Year’s Eve fun run has a budget crunch the size of an island in the river.

After decades of big companies sponsoring the annual race on Belle Isle, none stepped up this year to cover the main cost -- 1,000 running shirts -- said retired teacher Jeanne Bocci, who founded the event and plans it from her living room in Grosse Pointe Park.

The race has been a holiday staple in Detroit for decades, but this year Bocci needs a rescue.

"It’s not a money maker -- 90% of the time we break even. Sometimes we make a profit and we donate to the Special Olympics," Bocci said last week.

"The problem is, I’m a race director, not a marketing person. I mean, I taught high-school biology," she said, laughing in spite of her predicament.

"I really don't want to disappoint all the families. I have people who ran this years ago now bringing their children, or their grandchildren," Bocci said.

She has dozens of volunteers, ready to set course cones and the finish line from past years. Entries for the 48th annual New Year's Eve Family Fun Run/Walk (www.belleislefunrun.com) are starting to come in at $40 apiece — $20 for kids . And she's placed an order for 1,000 long-sleeved "tech" shirts at $8.50 each. But the shirts can't be sewn until she has cash in hand, as well as the name of a new major sponsor to print prominently on each one.

To buy her time, a chain of four suburban stores – Hanson’s Running Shops – pitched in what they could: $2,500 toward the $3,500 it will cost to rent the Belle Isle Casino for the annual post-race party; Bocci put the rest on her credit card, she said.

With other sponsors set to provide bananas, bottled water, craft beer and more, "I think I can pull this off with $5,000," Bocci said, if she penny-pinches on finish-line medals and trophies. Last year, the race had more than 800 participants altogether in the 1-mile kids event and 5K (3.1-mile) main race.

In contrast, the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day boasts half a dozen sponsors as it prepares to welcome a deluge of runners early Thursday morning, according to its website. Turkey trotters will race in downtown Detroit on the holiday parade route, just before America's Thanksgiving Parade steps off at 8:50 a.m. on Woodward at Kirby.

For the Turkey Trot's 5K and 10K races, "we're over 14,000 registrations now and that's about 500 ahead of last year" at the same time," race director Doug Kurtis said Friday. Runners and walkers can still enter, online through noon Monday and at Cobo Center through Wednesday, Kurtis said. Entry fees from the run go into the coffers of the nonprofit Parade Company that stages Detroit's holiday parade, he said.

The New Year's Eve event on Belle Isle, although far smaller, is a signature fun run in Detroit, Kurtis said. Bocci "gets her hands dirty, she makes it happen and she's done it all these years," he said.

The race goes back to 1970, when Bocci worked out with a circle of athletes who met often on Belle Isle, along with her husband, Jerry, an ex-college track star, the couple recalled, pointing to old newspaper articles and race memorabilia around their house.

"I started this as a healthy way to start the new year. It was never a way to make thousands of dollars like these other events,” said Bocci, 74, who spent 30 years teaching science at Grosse Pointe North High School, then another 15 as an adjunct professor at Baker College.

“It really started with me making spaghetti. That’s how this nightmare began,” she quipped.

Bocci was then a nationally ranked race walker, so she invited friends to race in their neighborhood and eat her spaghetti afterward, Bocci said. As she told it, the first year there were 10 or 12 runners, but each year word of mouth swelled the turnout until by Year Four — after the couple had moved from Detroit to Grosse Pointe Park — well more than 100 runners showed up, unleashing a torrent of complaints about parked cars and a demand from the Grosse Pointe Park mayor: Move this or else!

So the run landed on Belle Isle, mushrooming to draw as many as 4,000 revelers in running shoes, including some costumed as Father Time and others as Baby New Year, according to Free Press reports. Decades ago, runners got actual champagne handed them in plastic goblets at the finish line, back when fun runs were novelties and sponsors numerous. In recent years, races have spread like confetti thrown for auld lyne syne, making the competition for sponsors intense.

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Newspaper clips of articles written about Jeanne Bocci, 74, a retired teacher and former nationally ranked race walker who started a New Year Eve fun run with friends in her Grosse Pointe Park neighborhood in 1970. It grew into an annual race on Belle Isle but this year she doesn't have any major sponsor.(Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)

This fall, that shift has had Bocci scrambling toward race day without a major sponsor. If it dies, veterans of the event said they'd miss Bocci's zany way to end the year.

"I've known Jeanne since 1971 — we used to meet at her house for spaghetti," said Sheldon Johnson, 75, of Detroit.

"I've run in it, my daughter runs in it and now her daughter runs in it," Johnson said.

Daryl Brown, 48, of Warren, is looking forward to hearing his daughter Samantha, 13, sing the National Anthem at the start.

"It's a family tradition to run this — the weather is unpredictable, but the one thing you can predict is, it'll be cold," Brown said chuckling.